Things are more or less back to normal at Libsyn. The podcast still isn’t on iTunes, but that could be Apple’s fault and you can certainly listen to the podcast online.

Anyway, we have a new issue, and it is full of good stuff, starting with what I think is an absolutely awesome cover featuring one of my favorite paintings by Judith Clute.

Sam spends this issue talking about Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Jeanette Winterson and Venice. He also gets to talk with Jon in a bonus interview that happened by accident.

We have a guest article from Colin Harvey taking a close look at the career of one of the hottest properties in science fiction at the moment, Paolo Bacigalupi.

Jonathan’s search for Japanese steampunk led him to write an article about a crime writer who so loved Edgar Allan Poe that he gave himself a Japanese version of Poe’s name as a pen name: Edogawa Ranpo.

I have two article this issue. The main book review is all about 2010’s debut writers, but I also wrote a piece about the nature of “genre” which I hope might move us slightly away from the obsession with categorization (though it probably won’t).

Our interviewees are Paul Cornell (talking about writing comics) and our cover artist, Judith Clute. The Salon is also devoted to comics as Maura McHugh, Joe Gordon and David Monteith discuss potential nominees for the Graphic Story Hugo.

We also have the usual backup features of Pipeline and New In Store. The latter has news of a fundraiser project for Queensland Flood relief.